Of Spooks and Ghosts
by addrinum
Summary: A young MI5 agent is sent to Hogwarts
1. Intro

**Intro**

My story begins one infernally hot summer in 1995. It is not a true story. Well, no one will believe it is. My name is Milton Pike and I served Her Majesty by being an agent in Section 5 of Military Intelligence, better known as MI5, from 1993 till 1996 when I retired early due to medical reasons.

My personal history is not important. But due to clarity of this story I will share that I was recruited right after I finished high school, because I was what others like to call a "prodigy". It wasn't just the highest grades coupled with impressive athletic results that earned me that title, but also the fact that I could build a computer from scratch when I was only 7 years old. I was of a very inquisitive nature and I couldn't rest until I knew exactly how everything around me ticked. Which meant that I was always studying something, be it computer components or a book about numerology.

That being said, some analysts in MI5 whose duty was to find potential recruits by tracking school records and keeping an eye out for gifted children (yes, they really do that), dropped my file onto some important person's desk. And so, during the period in which my biggest life dilemma was whether to go with Oxford or Cambridge, I got a letter inviting me to a job interview for a position of "Surveyor of Polytechnic, Informatics and Electronic Systems". The letter was ridiculous, but I was excited because it was my first ever job offer, and with a why-not attitude I showed up on the given address. The "job interview" was, of course, some sort of a psychological assessment, which must have produced the expected results because they offered me to join the service of Her Majesty as a spy right then and there. Naturally, they used some lame euphemisms and technical language, but I knew they were saying "spy". For an eighteen year old, refusing such an offer would be in a serious disagreement with the accepted characteristics of teenage nature.

The first two years of service were uneventful, the Cold War being officially over, most of my spook colleagues were spending their time with their feet upon their desks, convinced in the "end of history" and a world free of serious security concerns. Of course, the world was still a dangerous place, but because the Soviets and their apocalyptic war arsenal were no longer a threat, they were more than willing to dump most of the work on us younger folks. But just like with every other honeymoon-phase, it did not last forever.

Like I said before it all started in 1995. It was an unnaturally hot summer. I was tasked with following a certain individual, who might pay a visit to someone who might know some arms dealer whom we were tracking. The senior officers were in their air conditioned offices, barking orders left and right, sending us rookies to do all the footwork, while they simply compiled all our hard work in files, which they would pass on to functionaries and get a commendation. Naturally, we younger agents were a tad displeased at the said system, but we couldn't do anything about it. That's how I found myself at that particular place at that particular time.


	2. Scene I

**Scene I**

"What are you so deep in thought about?" asked a girl holding my arm. We were walking down an empty street, looking like an ordinary couple returning home from a pleasant evening with friends.  
"I'm thinking the guy will make us if we continue to walk behind him like this, without another living soul in a 10-mile radius. It's suspicious, Lucy."  
Lucy just shook her head "He just walked out of a pub after drinking 10 pints of beer. I'm surprised he even sees the road under his feet."  
"Good point." I shook my head and looked around, "This quiet little suburbia must be home to at least a dozen arms dealers."  
Lucy chuckled, "Yes, villains no longer live in spooky houses on hills. Shame, it makes it harder to track them." I looked at her. She was my usual partner on operations like this. We worked well together. She was a junior agent like me, and we shared our disdain towards the seniors who were constantly taking all the credit for our hard work. We met when we were both assigned to read a 20.000 pages long important industrial report, and look for anything suspicious within it. Twenty thousand pages and twenty million lame jokes later, we became good friends, and whenever a task required a pair of agents we called on each other.  
She noticed me looking at her and smiled. Now, I'm not the kind of guy to disregard a pretty girl smiling at me, but something else caught my eye just then. As we were walking past a house I noticed a small guy dressed in a long coat, peering over the side fence at something in the distance. Deeming him suspicious I kept looking at him. As I was doing that, I saw him shake his head and then suddenly, with a loud _*POP*_ vanished into thin air. And I don't mean as in, ducked out of sight or anything, I mean literally _vanished into thin air_. Staring wide-eyed I couldn't have known then that this was the exact moment everything in my life would start to go sideways.

In retrospective, the sound that man made disappearing might not have been that loud at all, but on a quiet summer night in suburbia it might as well have been a gunshot. It was followed by another loud bang and some shouting, with almost every window in the vicinity producing heads looking out of windows. I was stunned by what I had just seen. I didn't even notice the guy we were tailing turned around and was looking intently at us. Lucy was a quick thinker and saved the situation by pulling me in a hug.  
"Kiss me on the cheek. Walk away. Stay on mike." Dumbfounded, I obeyed her instructions. We parted ways, with her casually walking into the back garden of the only house on the street with the lights out. As I was walking towards our guy he was looking at me nervously. To relax him I gave him a polite nod and nonchalantly walked past him. At least I hoped it was a nonchalant walk, because I was everything _but_ nonchalant. _What the hell did I just see!_ I was thinking to myself as I was walking away from the probably most exciting incident this neighborhood has seen in ages.

After walking aimlessly for about five minutes, trying to make some distance from the guy, the tiny electronic bug in my ear produced a voice.  
"Shit! Just our luck. Everything was running smoothly and then someone slams their window shut like that, waking our guy from his stupor." Lucy was whispering, "I can't believe it". I tried to pull myself together and forget what I saw.  
"You still on him?" I asked.  
"Yes, but now he is alert and I have to keep out of sight" she answered, and after en electronic sigh she added "You okay? You seemed really startled."  
"I guess I was in a stupor of my own. This damned heat…" I tried to save my spy dignity by devising a plan. "Listen, we can't risk him seeing you. Back off for now. He seemed to walk in a straight line, minus the drunken swaggering. I'm going to go the long way around and see if I can't overtake him and pick up his trail down the road."  
"Okay, I'm going to keep my distance behind him just in case. Keep me posted."  
"Roger that."

 _This damned heat_. I hurried down the road of a street that was meandering away from the one our guy was on. I knew the two streets would meet down the road. I was walking in a fast pace, trying not to attract any more attention. I passed a children playground and saw a group of teenagers arguing. One thin boy wearing glasses was standing up to three guys twice his size. _That won't end well._ I shook my head. What the hell do I care about one kid being beat up. I have a more important task at hand. I couldn't have been walking for more than ten minutes when my earpiece cracked up again.  
"Shit, I lost him!" Lucy said furiously.  
I stopped dead in my tracks. "What happened?"  
"Well, I stayed way behind him like you told me, and now I can't see him anywhere! He must have made a turn!"  
I let out a _*fuckshitfuck*_ under my breath and tried to remain calm. "Okayokayokay, so he probably stopped somewhere to piss all that beer out of his body. You wait where you are and I will double back." I was hoping that I was right and that I would see him still walking the route I assumed he was taking. If he turned somewhere without us seeing him, that would be three weeks of operational work down the drain.  
Lucy said "Okay." and nothing more. She was probably blaming me for this fuck-up and she was justified to do so. I let myself be lulled to sleep by the monotony of tailing someone and lost my composure. I straightened out. That must be it. I drifted halfway to sleep, and imagined that man. He vanished like that when I was woken up by that window slamming or car backfiring or whatever that was. Silently cursing myself, I briskly walked in the general direction of where I assumed I would find my target.

I was almost running by now, the familiar feeling of a cat and mouse chase overtaking me. I was letting out my favourite tirade of _*fuck-shit-fuck-shit*_ as a sort of a marching song in tune with my quick walking. I was afraid I might lose the target. The more I thought about that happening the more the fear grew. I also started getting really depressed about the whole situation. _If only I wasn't…_ I stopped walking. Something was wrong. It suddenly became really chilly. Unnaturally chilly. _What the…_ The feeling of playing cat and mouse was not alien to me. But now instead of being the chaser, I felt like I was the one being chased. I looked around. Nothing. I brought my hand to my ear and said "Lucy?" and received nothing but static in reply. "Lucy, can you hear me?"…"What the hell?" I said out loud.

There was fog all around me. I'm not an easily intimidated person, two years of espionage work giving me a lot of confidence in life, but I was scared. But not only scared I also felt… It's hard to explain… like I will never be happy in my life again or something. I started imagining my superior shouting at me for losing the target, my fellow colleagues laughing at me for messing up a routine assignment, Lucy angry with me for tarnishing her reputation too…  
 _This is crazy, I need to snap out of this dream._ The events of the entire night all coalesced into one compact feeling of dread. The mystery guy vanishing, losing my target, and now this cold fog it all seemed connected somehow and I felt awful, I felt like I was in the twilight zone.  
Trying to shake these overwhelming feelings of fear and unhappiness I looked around. Nothing but thick fog obscuring everything from view. What's worse I felt a _presence_ in the fog that I couldn't explain. And then I heard echoing voices in the vicinity. Certain that I was in the process of losing my mind, I felt like I had no choice but to investigate. _This is all just some sort of crazy weather patterns. Some cold wind got here from somewhere, mixed with the stagnant hot air, causing the fog…_ My meteorological knowledge was a bit rusty but I knew there was some sense to it somewhere. As I was approaching the voices I entered a tunnel which would explain the echo. But it was pitch dark and I couldn't see anything. Suddenly the voices started shouting  
"STOP IT!" "SHUT UP DUDLEY!" but I couldn't focus because that awful feeling skyrocketed in intensity and I was feeling nauseous and there was a high pitched screeching in my ears and I couldn't see anything as I was slowly losing my consciousness…

EXPECTO PATRONUM


	3. Scene II

**Scene II**

Two days after the "tunnel incident" I was back in the offices of MI5. The doctors have previously done a full check-up and determined there was nothing wrong with my head except a nasty bruise. But my superior, director of intelligence, Mr. Whitmore, was not concurring with that assessment. In fact he was shouting that there was something wrong with my head just now.  
"What the hell is wrong with you, agent Pike?! You actually expect me to believe your report? Do you really think…"  
Mr. Whitmore has spent his entire life defusing nuclear devices while suspended upside down with a blindfold on, or so he would like us all to believe. The senior agents all liked to denigrate us rookies by constantly talking how we have it easy, the Soviets are no longer a threat, only rainbows and sunshine from now on in this job.  
The reason for his shouting is the report I submitted regarding what happened during the operation the day before yesterday. He was convinced I fucked up a routine operation and that I was trying to cover it up by making things up.  
"I mean, come on. A bloody unicorn?" he was looking at me incredulously.  
"It looked like a unicorn. It might have been a sta-"  
"You have to be fucking joking!"  
"Sir, I am not making this up. There were two boys and-"  
"Shut it!" Whitmore looked up at the ceiling. He was sitting behind his desk, which was covered in important looking papers. A neat row of snowglobes was arranged on the edge of the desk. He gets one every Christmas from what I assume is a family member, although I never heard him mention having a family.  
I was standing in front, with Lucy standing next to me. She barely talked to me since that night. I can only assume she was angry with me. She's been working really hard towards some sort of promotion, the chances of getting it now looked really slim. After a long silence during which no one looked at each other, Whitmore finally spoke up.  
"Agent Jones, can you corroborate any part of agent Pike's story?"  
Lucy glanced at me and said "No sir, we got separated."  
"So, you don't know anything about unicorns and grim reapers holidaying in Surrey?"  
Lucy glanced at me again. "No, I'm afraid not, sir. But if Milton says…"  
"Dismissed, agent Jones."  
Lucy froze with her mouth open. She wanted to say something, but then changed her mind and after giving a quick salute, walked out of the office.  
"Close the door after you Jones, if you will."  
After the sound of the closing door there was more silence. Whitmore was looking at me intently. I wasn't saying anything, waiting for some sort of punishment. They will probably suspend me without pay. Or they might fire me. Either way, my life has changed since that night. Seeing what I had seen, it made me completely change my view of the world. There was something in it not explained by any book I read.  
"Agent Pike, do you stand behind your story?" Whitmore asked me.  
"Yes sir, I do."  
"You want me to send this report upstream? The way it looks now?"  
"I wrote an accurate report about what happened, sir. How it will look to others is out of my hands. Sir."  
"You do realise they will deem you mentally unstable? That is grounds for laying you off, Pike."  
I had nothing to say to that, so I just shrugged my shoulders. Whitmore sighed. He started digging into the pile of papers, and after a brief shuffle, pulled out one folder and handed it to me. The yellow folder had stamps "TOP SECRET" and "EYES ONLY". I was a bit confused. I looked at Whitmore. He just nodded his head towards the folder. After I was finished reading it, I put it back on the desk and said nothing.  
"So?"  
I looked at him. He had a hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth.  
"Magic – is real?" I uttered in disbelief.  
"Yes. We've known it for a long time now. There is a sort of, uh, gentlemen's agreement between them and us normal people. They stay out of our world, and we stay out of theirs."  
My world was changing rapidly. It was all set off two days ago with that boy with glasses. So he must have been a – wizard or something.  
"So…what happens now?" I asked.  
"Now, agent Pike, you will get promoted. Officially, you will take an unpaid vacation, courtesy of you failing a routine operation. But unofficially, you will embark on the most dangerous mission this service has ever devised."  
He made a dramatic pause.  
"Agent Pike, you will infiltrate the wizardry world." 


	4. Scene III

**Scene III**

I was sitting in a small, windowless room. The room contained only a round table and four chairs. I was sitting down, waiting for the other three chairs to get filled. Soon enough, the door opened behind me. Three men filed into the room. Mr. Whitmore sat on the chair to my right. A tall, skinny fellow wearing rectangle glasses sat to my left. A slightly overweight, balding man sat opposite me. The silence was broken by Whitmore.  
"Agent Pike, this is professor Zayne."  
The man to my left leaned towards me. We shook hands.  
"And this – is Overseer."  
I stared at the man in wonder. Overseer was almost like a myth. An officer so high up the chain he didn't even have a rank, or a real name. He was supposed to be in charge of overseeing all the important operations, hence the name. I extended my hand towards him. He didn't move.  
Whitmore continued as if nothing happened "Alright. Let's get down to business. Pike, you read the dossiers."  
The dossiers in question were waiting for me in my flat after I had left the offices yesterday. It was right after that conversation in which it was revealed to me that magic is real. It was an interesting read, to say the least. It contained all the information MI5 had on the magic world.  
"You know how dangerous this will be. This is a good time to back out." Whitmore said with a serious look on his face.  
The three men all looked at me, waiting. I looked back at them and said "I thought I lost my mind that night. But now I know that our world is in danger. I will do this for Queen and country."  
The Overseer smirked. Seems he finds something amusing about my patriotism.  
Professor Zayne spoke up "I read your file, agent. Impressive stuff. But, do you really think you can pull this off? Blending into a world of magic? Do you even know any card tricks?"  
I opened my mouth to reply, but he just smacked his hand on the table and said jovially "Of course you do, according to your file there isn't anything you don't know." He topped it off with a chuckle.  
"Do you have any questions?" Whitmore tried to bring back seriousness into the conversation.  
"Yes, a ton." After a pause I asked "The dossiers contained a lot of information for a world that is so well hidden. What are our sources?"  
Zayne simply said "Parents."  
I looked at Whitmore with a puzzled expression. He started explaining "There is an adequate number of parents whose children attend this -school- that are more than willing to cooperate with the authorities, for safety reasons of course. You never know what might happen to your child when you send it to a school that doesn't exist"  
"Okay, another question is - why? Why send an agent now, when there was an agreement to stay out of each other's hair?"  
"Because one of the parents reported that the dark wizard, the one in the dossiers who terrifies the entire magic community, might be back in action."  
That doesn't sound good. From what I remember from the dossiers, that guy is seriously bad news. So bad, in fact, that everyone was scared of even saying his name out loud.  
"Right. I still don't quite get it. If their community might be in danger of another war isn't that – kind of their problem? I mean, don't get me wrong, but I fail to see what does that have to do with us. It's not like we can do anything about it but keep our heads down and hope for the best."  
Zayne replied this time "Woah kid, we aren't sending you to defeat a dark wizard or anything. We just want you to gather information. Snoop around, and let us know when to start, how did you put it, start keeping our heads down."  
I looked at him. He seemed like a jolly fellow. I wondered what his exact purpose in MI5 might be.  
"So, what's the plan?" I asked.  
Whitmore took initiative on answering that question "The plan is for you to reconnaissance this school that seems to be the epicenter of shitshows. Apparently, the news of the dark wizard's return originated from there. I guess it could also be said that your overall mission is to confirm the information about the magic world we are getting from the parents. As their children grow older, they become less and less cooperative. We always take their information with a grain of salt. Intelligence provided by an actual agent would be much more valuable."  
I now knew where this was going. They had no plan whatsoever! Well they did, actually, the plan is to throw me into the middle of a crazy world, and if I survived and came back with intel, great. If not, they silence an agent with material for a bestselling book about how the MI5 kept the secret of the existence of magic from people.  
"And how exactly will I get to this school? From what I read in the dossiers it is impossible for a normal man."  
"Impossible, but doable." Zayne said. "Your best bet is boarding the school train. If you accomplish that, getting to the school should be no problem. Based on the description of the journey the children shared with their parents we managed to pinpoint the rail and then we followed it back to the departure station."  
"Why didn't you follow it to the school?"  
"Heh, our pilots tried but after following it for a distance they would constantly get confused and lose sight of the tracks. One of those safety spells we heard about. We didn't encounter that problem with the station."  
I gave him a confused look. "Seems like a serious oversight in security."  
"Could be. Or the station's spells are not as powerful as the school's. Or the spells are meant only for random trespassers, not determined investigators."  
Whitmore re-engaged into the conversation "Professor Zayne is our expert in the studies of magic. He has written a guide-book for you. Study it in detail."  
Zayne chuckled "Yes, yes, one should always RTFM before delving into any sort of dangerous activity."  
Overseer leaned forward. Immediately, the other two men straightened up and looked at him.  
"You seem like a capable agent, Mr. Pike. This mission will be in the history books that will never see the light of day. This is your final chance to withdraw."  
Again all three men looked at me in anticipation. Didn't take me longer than a few moments to ultimately say "Let's do this."  
Whitmore looked pleased. Zayne was smiling. Overseer's face was blank. After a short period of exhilarating silence Overseer solemnly declared:

"Operation Magus is a go" 


	5. Scene IV

**Scene IV**

Walking down a corridor that must have extended for miles, I was quietly re-evaluating my life choices. Particularly the one I made last week, about infiltrating the magical world. With nothing to do, officially being on an unpaid vacation from work, I sat at home and read the dossiers. Lucy dropped by once, to give me a lecture about alertness and professionalism. With everything going on in my mind, I was unjustly short with her and she left in anger. I was still under the impression from what I read about "Lord Voldemort" and "Death Eaters" and so on and on…

"Make a hole, make a hole!" I looked down the corridor and saw a man dressed in a formal suit with a bow tie, carrying a briefcase on his extended arms. He was half-running and covered in sweat. People were jumping out of his way, hugging walls. I put my back against the wall to let him pass. The briefcase was producing a faint ticking sound. Not a good sign.

Remembering my own end-of-the-world situation I continued on my path. I was passing doors with single letters hanging from them. When I reached the one with a big Z on them I knocked.

"Come in, come in" I opened the door and stepped into professor's Zayne's office. It was really small, or rather so full of things you could barely move. Zayne was sitting behind a big desk, covered in many objects I couldn't identify. The two walls on the side had shelves from floor to ceiling, all covered in various artifacts, ranging from really old looking books to empty picture frames.

"I see you are admiring my junk" Zayne said with a smirk. I transferred my gaze from the shelves to him. He was looking at me intently behind his glasses. "Don't worry, everything in here serves a purpose."

"What purpose?" I asked looking at a what looked like a small tree branch.  
"Don't you worry about that, lad. What you need to worry about is surviving in a world of MAGIC" He emphasised the last word by producing a single card, ace of spades, out of nowhere to his hand. With a chuckle he tossed the card aside and said "You will need a few tricks of your own if you want to come back alive from this."

"Well, that's why I'm here. Mr. Whitmore told me you had 'toys' for me."  
"Ooooh," he started saying, and sweeping junk from his desk to make a clean surface, "…do I…", he put a fountain pen on the desk, "…have…", now he put a zippo lighter next to the pen, "…toys…", and a handful of toffees on top of them "…for you" he finished dramatically.  
I looked at him in confusion.

"You are confused, I can see. Let me explain. As I'm sure you already know electronical devices don't work well around this magic school." I nodded, having read that information in the dossiers. "So, I had to make sure your tools are completely… old-school. We had similar fears with the Soviets, that they would be able to sabotage our doodads with their own doodads so the boys down here in R&D had to get really creative in making simple tools that will always work, be it sub-zero temperatures or surface of the Sun. Well, not really but you get my meaning."

He picked up the pen " So , do you know what this is?"  
I cocked my head and said "Not really a pen?"  
"Oh it is, just not the one you can write letters with." He removed the cap. "On inspection it looks like a regular fountain pen doesn't it? But watch this." He squeezed the pen in his hand and from the end of the pen the nib came flying out, missing my ear by an inch and hitting the wall behind me.  
"Zayne, what the fuck!" I protectively covered my ear, a split second too late.  
"Sorry, sorry, it slipped. But you see how useful it is, yes? You can even dip it in poison should you feel particularly threatened. Oh, and always keep the cap on, remove it only when you intend to use it, to avoid accidents, okay?" I nodded, still a little mad over what happened.

"Okay, onto the next attraction." He lifted the zippo from the table. "Now this is just an ordinary lighter." He lighted it, proving his point. He tossed it to me.  
"I don't smoke." I said, not amused.  
"Oh, well in that case, you can use it for its second purpose. Turn the flint wheel in the other direction until you hear a faint click."  
I obediently moved my thumb onto the wheel and then paused. "What will it do?"  
"Produce a cloud of tear gas. Yeah, on a second thought save it for a different occasion. It has only one charge so use it wisely."

Finally he turned his attention to the toffees. They looked generic, with each wrapping a different color, without any marking of the manufacturer.  
"Again, something completely ordinary and non-threatening. Just a bunch of candy. Children love them. Just don't leave them within their reach."  
He took one, unwrapped it, and popped it in his mouth, smiling.  
"Zayne."  
"Straight to business, huh. These are your ordinary, run of the mill caramel candy. But I infused them with a cocktail of anti-psychotics."  
"Why?" I asked, looking at him nervously.  
"Because, I believe, that they will counteract the confusion spells around the school. With them you will be able to walk right in, and not wander off."  
"You believe?"  
"Yes, well, they haven't been tested of course. I've been waiting for an op like this for ages. It will answer so many questions." He said chewing the toffee and looking off somewhere in the distance.  
"Any… side-effects?"  
Chewing absent-mindedly, and still looking at nothing he said "I'll let you know in a couple of hours." 


End file.
